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Poem by Coleen T. Houlihan

Illustration by James Conant

The ConfessionIn loving rip-off and honor of Allen Ginsberg

I am terrified of the thick cloak of clergy,the ones who cannot remember the hollow humof insides, center of human universe,hot cunt of earthly pleasure.I have almost been defeated by the snarl of girls,young with inexperience but enough yearsunder their belt to have discovered the amusementat another girl’s expulsion.I have loved men and then hatedthe change in their affection when the lureof pussy subsides and becomes real flesh, tight flesh;seeing with flashlights the power of birth and blood and cumand their own demise, and in it, a need to instigate mine.I have run through the streets at dark,a flesh and blood beast of mortality,better than nothing and queen of my world.I have heard, through my own ears, my voicesound one way, then morph into a womanpossessed on tapes, screeching poetry,trying to evoke Sexton’s madness,rubbing into my pores Miller’s filthand thinking this is what it felt liketo stroke Anais’ skin.I have ingested the barf of nations wavingguns and flags. Swallowing, I have often foundthe taste putrid, can remember from time to timethe occasions when it was sweet.I have felt super power strength,my legs two muscled boulders,bullets grazing them like flies and then stumbledand fell when I saw the eyes of a dead child—some small dead thing, some testimonyto my inevitable death and powerlessness.I have painted my nails for hours,putting polish on, taking it off, toopurple, too red, too pink, tooscared and lonely if I am honest,too choosy if I am not.I have often wanted to run madknocking into celebrities and‘people of note’ like a linebacker,spitting and flicking my menstrual bloodin the upturned faces of proper people,afraid I might turn the corner and bump into myself.I have crawled on the floor with cats, cried overdying bats, sprayed worms with Raid and watchedthem wriggle in agony, such vividinterpretation of so many humans’ dance.I have envied the singular arguments ofschizophrenics, waved my own fists at ghostsand shaken my head in psych class atcase studies of the mad.I have hated other women, their titsand legs and asses, their brains, and hair, and spiritand laughed when others have laughedand stood naked, cold, shaken and so ashamedunder the puritanical spotlight wondering howit was I could be convinced to hate so stronglyall of the things I have loved.I have elicited responses, stroked the backof the lobster right next to the boiling pot,relished in my ability to get others to loveand then skipped down the lane, past thebig bad wolf, past grandma and found myselfcompletely alone, not abandoned, simply lost and never found.I have stirred the brew of treachery,brought laughter with my words, ruined people’sdays, made children dance and found myself human.I have fucked and been fucked, suckedand been sucked, listened to sonnets composed,composed sonnets listened to and wrung my handsdistraught that sweetness could be suchsubterfuge when mixed with other people’simpossible standards of living— old, old wayswhich never worked but through storiesand words, keep going, and going, and going.I have spent money I do not have buying thingsI already do and thrown beloved items out, smilingand clapping, imagining what it must be like to bebeholden to nothing and in that wayhaving control over everything.I have taken pleasure in an photographer’s lips,secretly touching tongue to tongue,twirling curls over digits andallowed my hands to be clappedbehind back, luxuriating in the giftof being understood— if only for a momentmade three dimensional by an aficionado of the glossy flat.I have defecated and been beautiful,teased, plucked, pulled and been grotesque inthe artificiality, under the shadow of someoneelse’s lack of originality.I have made love to outsiders,posed for pictures with the norm,been comfortable in both worlds and made confusedby what the papers have had to say the next day.I have fingered unread manuscripts that containedthe best of me and had useless words underlined and quoted.I have, on occasion, closed my eyes to the presentand become a heaving, swaying, shackled, proud beast,blinked, and gone running to Sacks Fifth Avenueto buy perfume and distance…

So what does it mean when the devil was an angeland God can cause someone to fall?So many languages, impossible to understand them all.With every orifice open I please and disgust the world.Ah, but I am still standing— maggots quiver on edgefor the word—Ah, but I am still standing…Not bad for this girl.